Hebrews 13
GodbeyHebrews 13:10-19
19 THE TWO . While the Father so loved this lost world that He gave His only Son, to die a ransom and redeem every son and daughter of Adam’s ruined race from the doom of sin, death, and hell, yet it is a significant fact here unequivocally revealed, that Jesus gave Himself to suffer and die that He may sanctify His people by His blood. Hence we see the double offering, i.e., that of the Father for a wicked world, and that of the Son to sanctify the Church.10. The altar here is the cross of Calvary on which the Lamb of God bled and died. Allusion is here made to the Levitical priests who fed on the sacrifices offered in the sanctuary.11. This verse describes the sin-offering, which the priests were not allowed to eat, because the law required them to carry it out beyond the lines of the encampment, and utterly consume it with fire, thus vividly emblematizing God’s method with sin, which is absolute extermination. This sin-offering typifies Christ, whose human life was utterly exterminated without the wall of Jerusalem, for the sins of the whole world.
Just as the priests had no right to partake of the sin-offering, so ecclesiastical clergy have no official right to partake of Christ. They have to come, divested of official distinction, low down in the dust like all other sinners, or make their bed in hell.
Away with the pompous pretensions of popery, prelacy and priestcraft! It is a hotch-potch of Satan’s lies. hatched in hell for the damnation of them and their deluded votaries. For this reason, doubtless, Christ did not spring from the tribe of Levi, to which all the priests belonged, but from Judah, in which there were no priests. Despite this impassable chasm between Christ and the clergy, yet the official appropriation of the Christhood by the ecclesiastical custodians and conservators has been the heresy of all heresies, blinding the popular mind, ritualizing the churches, plunging them into idolatry and engulfing millions in hell.12. “Therefore Jesus in order that He might sanctify the people by His own blood suffered without the gate.” This verse reveals the great fact that after the Father had given the Son to die a ransom for a guilty world, the Son spontaneously gave Himself that He may sanctify His people by His own blood. Oh, how prominent in the Bible the two works of grace, i.e., the one to redeem a guilty world, and the other to sanctify the redeemed Church. Why did Jesus die outside the walls of Jerusalem?
It was to deliver the world from the heresy of priestcraft and ecclesiasticism, and illustrate His accessibility to the guilty millions of all ages and races. Jesus died not within the pales of the Church where His atonement is appropriated and doled out by an intriguing clergy and carnal officiary, but His expiation of human guilt takes place on Mount Calvary, standing without the wall in the open firmament of this great sin-debauched world, perfectly accessible to every lost soul of all ages and nations.
These indisputable facts eternally sweep away all the arrogant claims of popes, bishops, priests, pastors and ecclesiastical officials and church rites. This one thing is certain beyond all defalcation: in the plan of salvation there are only two parties, i.e., the sinner and Christ.13. “Consequently let us go forth to Him, without the camp, bearing His reproach.” In this we do not see Comeoutism. We certainly should remain in our churches, to shine and shout for Jesus and save others. But in harmony with the pure spirituality of the Bible we are to understand this commandment. If you depend on your preacher and church for salvation, and especially for sanctification, you will never get it. You have to leave church rites, clerical manipulations and human help, and go away alone to Jesus and settle the problem of your regeneration as a sinner and your sanctification as a Christian.
Beware how you take the ipse dixit of a man on this momentous question involving for your soul heaven or hell. Be sure you leave all sects, creeds, pastors, evangelists and official boards; go and settle these immortal issues with Jesus only.
When God does the work He is certain to notify you. Never rest without the witness of the Spirit to your regeneration as a sinner, and your sanctification as a Christian, as the meridian sun in his noonday glory.14. This epistle was written but a short time before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, to which here is evidently a prophetical allusion, corroborated by the mournful evanescence of all things temporal.15. “Therefore through Him let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips confessing His name.” Oh, what a positive commandment and fervent exhortation in favor of the incessant testimony, which the holiness people are forever ringing out! The dead churches, like Ananias and Sapphira, keep back a part of the price, i.e., the “fruits of their lips,” and, like them, plunge into spiritual death, toppling into hell. Take warning and learn to obey this command, i.e., “incessantly offering unto God the fruit of your lips,” i.e., everlastingly and eternally with your mouth open, testifying for God.16. “Do not forget benefaction and fellowship: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” So, when you get the clear witness of the Spirit to your regeneration as a sinner and sanctification as a Christian and go on with your mouth open, ringing out your testimony, “incessantly offering unto God the fruit of your lips,” amid all, be sure that you are always doing good, and extending your loving Christian fellowship to all you meet. In that case you have the blessed assurance in this Scripture that God is not simply reconciled to you, but “delighted” with you.17.
This long verse is a fervent exhortation to follow the spiritual leaders whom the Holy Ghost has sent among you, especially in view of the fact that you must meet them before the great white throne, when God will put them on the witness-block to testify in your case. As you desire their testimony to acquit you in that awful hour, be diligent to obey their Godly precept and emulate their saintly example.18. “Pray for us… wishing to deport ourselves beautifully among all.”Here Apollos and his evangelistic comrades, fifteen hundred miles beyond the seas in Italy, beseech their consanguinity in Palestine to pray for them that they may move throughout the whole world shining in the beauty of holiness.19.
How naturally do we all sigh to behold again the beautiful green hills and sunny skies of our native land. Here Apollos and his comrades ask their kindred at Jerusalem to pray that they may once more see the Holy City. I trow that prayer was never answered. The storms of war and death, which so soon deluged the Holy Land with blood, and whitened it with bones, were too nigh to admit the reasonable probability that these brethren would be likely to get back from Italy, and make an evangelistic tour in Palestine, as the R man armies not only destroyed the city, but slew a million of Jews by sword, pestilence and famine, selling a million more into slavery, and driving the scathed and peeled remnant out of the country to roam among the Gentiles. The Emperor Adrian even went so far as to make it a penalty of death for Jews in other countries to be found traveling with their faces toward Jerusalem. Such was his devotion to the Roman gods and his implacable hatred to the Jewish and Christian religion that he did his utmost to obliterate their memory from the earth.
He even cast away the name “Jerusalem,” having the city rebuilt by the Gentiles under the name “Elia Capitolina,” which name it retained two hundred years, meanwhile “Jerusalem” was slumbering in oblivion. When the Emperor Constantine and his mother, Queen Helena, were converted to Christianity, A.D. 325, they came to Jerusalem, hunted up the sacred places, had the city rebuilt in splendor and beauty, restoring the good old name, “Jerusalem,” which it has ever retained.
Hebrews 13:20-25
20 . 20, 21. “And the God of peace, who raised up from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep, make you perfect through the blood of the everlasting Covenant in every good thing to do His will, doing among us that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” This grand, glorious and beautiful benediction, which ought frequently to ring out from our pulpits, has been so marred in the English translation as to be almost unintelligible, reading as if God raised up Christ through His own blood. The blood had been shed and left on Mount Calvary. God raised Him up by His own omnipotence, by which He created all worlds and holds up the Universe. The transcendent climax of this wonderful Hebrew letter from beginning to end is Christian perfection. Apollos proves it by twenty unanswerable arguments.
Infinitely alien from Babylonian theologians, who everywhere teach that we reach this perfection by growth, Apollos does not so much as use the word in the entire book. Hence the ridiculous preposterosity in the advocacy of the growth theory.
This wonderful benediction furnishes us the key to unlock the mystery and solve the problem. “The God of peace who raised up from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ make you perfect through the blood of the everlasting Covenant.” Hence we see this perfection is the work of Christ, wrought in the heart by His own blood. Human depravity is a blood trouble, hence hereditary and incurable, save by divine intervention. Since it is a blood trouble, like all hereditary diseases nothing but blood can heal it. If the leper could get rid of all of his blood, every drop of which is full of leprosy, and receive a new supply of pure blood, his leprosy would forever depart. This is the wonderful gracious economy. Salvation is purely the work of God.
Jesus alone can make you perfect. His blood is the only elixir competent to expurgate your blood from the malady of original sin.
The Greek “katartisai,” make perfect, is in the aorist tense, which means “instantaneity,” forever sweeping away the possible conception of gradualism. Hence you see in this wonderful benediction the clear and unequivocal exegesis of the great perfection problem, constituting the climax of this wonderful book. God makes you perfect through the blood of the everlasting Covenant. This perfection eliminates all sin out of you, forever removing every hindrance to your joyful obedience to His blessed and holy will, preparing you to live in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”22. Apollos exhorts his Palestinian brethren to see that this letter receives a general reading circulation and exposition among all the saints of his beloved consanguinity.23. The faithful Timothy is the honored bearer of this valuable message, with whose eyes Apollos actually feels that he will be permitted to see his kindred once more in the flesh.24.
This verse simply contains their mutual Christian salutations from Italy to Palestine et visa versa.25. “Grace be with you all.” While the benediction in Hebrews 13:20-21 is grand for its prolixity and glorious for its wonderful concentration of vital saving truth, this final benediction is beautiful and convenient for its brevity. The benedictory monotony in the popular churches is much to be regretted.
We seldom have a benediction but that of Paul at the conclusion of his second Corinthian letter. There is no apology for this injudicious and unedifying monotony in the benedictory service of our pulpits, since the Holy Ghost has supplied us with a beautiful variety in the different letters through His inspired writers. The Hebrew epistle gives us these two, the one pre-eminent for its prolixity and epitome of truth, and the other for its brevity.